NATURE'S PERISCOPE PUT TO NEWS USE today : world news from all over the place, presented to you with the banana-skin-like appeal of careless afterbirth Poo Ruining Office Morale For Ex-Roly-Poly When The Mighty Atom took over the position of Team Leader of a team of data inputters, she was very happy. It marked a change in gear for her flagging career, and would take her one step closer to the softer toilet roll that posh people use. What she didn't reckon on was a fat turd sitting on a desk close to her, a fat turd that simply refused to stop being there, despite her slow blinking and double takes. "Although it doesn't technically have any eyes, it winks at me. It winks at me and speaks of other worlds. Occasionally the air between myself and the turd crackles with energy, and I can feel myself being pulled into the realm of Dungeons & Dragons." The Mighty Atom is no stranger to shit - she regularly drops enormous sliding doors herself, and her appearance in the 1981 Royal Variety Performance was marred by her skin-tight dancing suit clearly showing the reconnaissance mission of a curious turtle. And yet, she is having trouble coming to terms with the twinkling brown arse diamond sitting next to her. "If someone does move it soon, I'm going to eat it," she threatened. "Although I'm not sure if I've read something about that - you know, if you eat poo then the next poo you do is so dense that it attracts small items, like flies." Man In Pub Writes News Article You'll never believe it. They've introduced beer vouchers for alcoholics. Straight up. You walk into the DSS, show them this little ID card which they swipe and it tells them what you're addicted to, Special Brew, White Lightning, whatever, and they give you coupons. They ask you how many you want, and then they give you one less - weaning you off it, see? They're even doing it for kids - and they throw in a couple of condoms and a wire coat hanger for home abortions. It's a scandal. I'm going to give up my bloody job and sign on - I'd be better off at this rate. No wonder everybody's moving to Australia. You know those homeless people selling the Big Issue? They earn five hundred pounds a day. And some of them don't even sell it, they just steal the magazine from the real homeless people who live under bridges and wave them around and expect you to give them a knighthood. It's ridiculous - a knighthood used to mean something, now they're giving them to anyone. I know someone who got knighted fifty times, because of a clerical error in Buckingham palace. They chipped his shoulder bone with the sword. He's suing the queen for that. They say he'll get about a million pounds. I think that's terrible. Suing the queen like that. Some people have got no sense of occasion. Postmodernism "Load Of Shit", Says Bigot Britain's proud position at the forefront of latent bigotry is still under threat from the undermining tactics of clever people, says Jim Davidson, comedian, monarchist and proud bigot. He claims that if people aren't allowed to hate foreigners in the privacy of their own home, then they will take this hatred onto the streets and set fire to Chinese restaurants. "I suggest we enter a stage of super-postmodernism, where self-criticism and over-awareness of your influences and surroundings are replaced by an insurmountable arrogance and wife-hatred like that which ruled comedy in the seventies. After about ten years of disturbing Ben Elton style self-appraisal should come affirmation, confidence, and subsequently a sneering ridicule of all other creeds. It is in this kind of atmosphere that I could use the many racist jokes I have written since I became unpopular, and my career could be rebuilt. Have I told you my new racist joke? It's about my friend Chalky who is black getting involved in a hate crime. They punch him in the lip, and it swells up, but his lips are big anyway so nobody notices. I think that's how it ends - it needs a little work. I'm also working on a couple of jokes that make fun of oriental people's eyes." Alarmingly, confidence can also lead to open-mindedness. Some people can seem utterly at peace with the world, and unassailably accepting. "That's not what we're after at all - there will have to be a general sense of paranoia - say, that the gays are trying to convert our children, and that our taxes are being used for enormous subsidies for lesbian fertility treatments. That sort of thing." Ratty Frenchman Defends Shitting In A Hole Gilles Derniame further aggravated the English last week. "You English. What could be more unnatural than shitting into an oversized flushable teacup? You are all ashamed of your bottoms, and for this reason you are repressed homosexual gardeners and tea-shop owners." "You are all so strange. You think that you are super cool, and yet you are not. You cannot sex your women properly, because you don't know how. I, on the other hand, have only to say three meaningless words in my tongue to get them all mega-wet. We also do not find the act of cunnilingus repulsive, as it appears on most adverts for nearly everything in my country." Gilles then outlined his plan to make English women pregnant and leave them - coming back eighteen years later to introduce the child to illegal drugs and have sex with them. "I do not even care which sex they are, so overwhelming is my desire to be completely and avowedly evil. I will just fuck whatever they leave open." Government Denies Oppressing Everyone With Tanks And Guns The Chinese Government denies oppressing its people by running them over in tanks and shooting them with guns. "It is all a bit of fun," laughed the Chinese Ambassador. "You remember the television progra mme It's A Knockout? Well it's very much like that. Crazy yet fun. And remember - your royal family did an edition of this crazy yet fun programme." "We have devised several new games for our students. One, in which they dress up in enormous foam outfits and attempt to carry buckets of coloured water into plastic cylinders. I will sit atop a tank with a gun, and pick them off in case they destabilise my government with such patently crazy behaviour. Stop that fucked-up behaviour immediately!" "As the final game, I dress up as an oversized playing card - which makes it pretty damn hard to walk, I can tell you! In this form I order my troops to attack. My orders are verified through a complex encryption technique, in case some troops think that it is wrong to accept orders from a playing card. Alas, this is not Wonderland - although we are trying." Local Old Man So Old He Dies Since moving into Nottingham's Lace Market, Graham Foulds became something of a local celebrity. Upon his arrival, young children shied away from him, hiding behind their parent's leg. Cats also seemed suspicious of the eerily boy-faced pensioner, who would relentlessly grin and wipe his hands on his flannel trousers, and beckon to children from across the launderette. Slowly licking his lips, with one ankle dancing involuntarily on the tiles. "He would get this thing out of his pocket, and play with it. He would become lost in it, but occasionally glance up to see if anyone was looking. Sometimes people would become curious, and go over to him. Then he would show them his blood-soaked handkerchief, and laugh to himself." No one knows whether Graham could talk - he preferred to express himself through a system of needful grunts, and by brushing the backs of his hands against your face and moaning. The coroner's verdict on Graham's death is that he fell into a barrel of mousetraps. STOP PRESS...STOP PRESS...STOP PRESS...STOP PRESS...STOP PR Crows all over the UK are jubilant today, as a decision in the high courts ruled that Kia-Ora is no longer too orangey for them. A spokesman for the crows spoke from an elated flock; "this is great news. Finally, we'll get to taste it without having to go through the demeaning process of imitating dogs, which never seemed to work anyway."